Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to spend $1.4 trillion building infrastructure if he gets re-elected in the upcoming Parliamentary elections. While the manifesto of the Modi-led political outfit, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), lacked details, data shows that projects worth nearly half that amount, over $600 billion, are already in various stages of planning or implementation.

Existing promises

Existing promises

25% of the $650 billion is likely to go into the power sector -- mostly renewable energy-- in the next five years based on the estimates from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), according to a Citi report. The CEA had estimated in 2017 that ₹2.6 trillion ($40 billion) will be spent on building and improving power transmission by March 2022, half of which will be invested by state-owned Power Grid Corporation.

Over 1450 kilometres of metro rail projects are in different stages of progress, according to a Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs report released in March 2019. Citi estimates that each kilometre would cost about ₹5 billion, and therefore, the total project cost there would be about ₹7.3 trillion ($109 billion).

Existing promises

The Narendra Modi government unveiled a project to build 100 smart cities in India in 2015. In February 2018, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the Parliament that 99 cities have been selected and about ₹2.04 lakh crore ($32 billion) has already been allocated.

Existing promises

The Minister of Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, said in September 2018 that the government would invest about $60 billion in new airports and modernising existing airports in the next ten years. According to the government, another $21 billion worth port development projects have been identified under the Sagarmala project, which aims to build 12 major and 200 non-major ports located along the country’s 7,500-kilometre coastline.

Existing promises

The Indian Railways spent about $130 billion in capital expenditure between 2015 and 2019. Citi estimates a 15% growth in the next five years based on the institution’s past track record, and that would be about $147 billion.